fdisk issues - external drive.

[Bryn M. Reeves]

On Mon, 2009-05-11 at 17:09 -0600, Kevin Kempter wrote:
> I have a new Lacie 1TB external drive. When I plug it in via USB or
> eSATA cable it's instantly recognized by Fedora. However I want the
> drive to contain an ext3 filesystem. So I do this:
> 
> 
> 
> 1) # fsisk <device>

You ran fdisk on /dev/sdc1 - that's a partition, not the whole disk
device. Try running it on /dev/sdc instead.

> Disk /dev/sdc1: 10 MB, 10484736 bytes
            ^^^^

This shows fdisk is operating on the partition sdc1, not the whole disk
(sdc). You want to see something like this instead:

  # fdisk /dev/sdc

  Command (m for help): p

  Disk /dev/sdc: 65 MB, 65517568 bytes
  3 heads, 42 sectors/track, 1015 cylinders
  Units = cylinders of 126 * 512 = 64512 bytes

     Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
  /dev/sdc1               1        1015       63924   83  Linux


> Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
> /dev/sdc1p1 1 1 8001 83 Linux

Again, you're getting this funny "sdc1p1" naming style because you are
creating a nested partition table (partitioning a partition) rather than
partitioning the whole disk device.

Regards,
Bryn.